


Vision

by emmaliza



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: (in that they don't have orac pretty much), Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Memory Loss, Multi, Past Rape/Non-con, Series A, attempted hurt/comfort, ruined by various people's emotional problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:00:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23493619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmaliza/pseuds/emmaliza
Summary: Blake gains access to footage of his interrogation by the Federation. He and Avon discuss it.
Relationships: Implied Blake/Avon, Implied Jenna/Blake, Kerr Avon & Roj Blake, Roj Blake/Original Male Character(s)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14





	Vision

It was, admittedly, all his own fault. He was the one who thought a derelict, abandoned Federation prison ship might be a valuable source of intel. He was the one who sent Cally and Vila over to take their computer. He should have sent Avon, but none of them seemed keen to hang around a Federation vessel, even an empty one, any longer than necessary, so it seemed easier to send someone to swipe the thing (Vila's speciality, with Cally to keep him in line) and let Avon work on decrypting its files from the comfort of his quarters.

Vila, to his credit, tried to spare him. “We didn't find anything, honest!” he blurted out, long before Blake got the chance to ask him what they'd found. “Just a load of burnt out old computers. We didn't look – well, we _did_ , but just to see if we could, you know, without having to wait for Avon – but we didn't see anything–”

“Vila.” Cally cut him off while he babbled. “He deserves to know.”

That had a certain surety to it that seemed to answer any questions, although from the look in her eye, Cally wasn't any happier about what they'd found than Vila was.

His crewmates' odd behaviour made Blake frown, wondering what it could be that left them so shaken. “What did you find?” he asked, taking the computer from Cally's hands.

“Federation interrogation records,” she said, then her jaw moved, like she was swallowing the bile from her throat. “Filmed torture sessions, essentially.”

Ah. That explained a lot – why they were so shaken, at least. Cally, who was so good at heart, and Vila, who was so _afraid_ at heart; of course they were disturbed by seeing visual evidence of what the Federation did to its enemies when given infinite time and ability. He could have hardly have chosen the crew for this mission more poorly, he thought with irritation.

And yet, that didn't explain everything, not quite. _He deserves to know._ It didn't take Blake long to put two and two together. “And mine are among them, are they?”

Cally nodded. “I'm afraid so, Blake,” she said, pale.

Blake sighed deeply. He saw why Vila hadn't wanted to tell him. Still, now he knew, it would bother him until he did something about it – the only solution was to confront the problem head on.

“Zen. Play this computer's interrogation records on the main screen. From the beginning.” He doubted Vila and Cally had been content to sit through numerous strangers being tortured until they found him.

_Blake..._ Cally tried to warn him, and didn't want to say it aloud, but Blake ignored her. He didn't stop to think this might be something he wanted to watch in private. As far as he saw it, if any of his crew lost their respect for him after seeing him in pain and afraid, they could find another ship. He knew them better than that anyway. He'd never made any secret of what the Federation had done to him, and didn't think it something to be ashamed or in denial of.

He wasn't even looking when he realised his mistake. The sound was enough. There were the sounds you might expect from a torture session – screams, grunted and loud curses of defiance, but there was more than that. Smacks of skin on skin. Gasps. Moans. Hushed whispers along the lines of _shut up and open your mouth, you rebel faggot_ and _oh, I think he likes that, don't you?_

Blake turned around to the sight of himself, naked, lying prone under the bodies of three Federation troopers, and displayed for the entire ship to see. “Off,” he barked, but it was too late. He had played the tape, and now everyone, _everyone_ knew.

*

Six hours later, Roj Blake sat alone on the flight deck, having volunteered to take the night shift, since he knew he wouldn't be able to sleep. His crew had been giving him a wide berth since they had seen the video, although whether that was for his or their sakes, he couldn't say.

He stared into the empty void of space, stars twinkling eternities away. He rather wished something would come attack them, if only to distract him from what was happening in his own mind. A Federation attack fleet, yes, that would be convenient – he could fool himself that the three men he'd seen on screen might be on board, get his vengeance that way. Then it would be over, settled. Done and dusted.

Emotions flickered through his mind as he tried to make them fit the situation. Anger, then sadness. Nothing worked though, leaving only a strange, numb, nauseated feeling.

A pair of footsteps behind him made him jump, but it was only Avon. He knew Avon suffered from insomnia, and was prone to roam the ship at night, a habit that unsettled Blake at the best of times. He'd asked Cally if she couldn't do something to help him, but apparently Avon didn't care much for psychoactive drugs, a viewpoint to which Blake was, naturally, sympathetic.

“Avon,” he said, officially declaring himself on guard. “I hope you haven't come to give your sympathies. You, telling me how sorry you are and, if I ever need to talk, you're right there? It doesn't seem likely.”

Blake realised this aggression, when Avon had not actually said or done anything, was entirely unjustified, the result of him lashing out at a convenient target when he didn't know what he should do or say or feel. Still, Avon seemed entirely willing to perform in his little pantomime, for which Blake was grateful.

“Hardly.” Avon bared his teeth, as vicious as ever, and Blake felt relieved to have _some_ certainty to rely on. “Rest assured, Blake, the fact the Federation raped you makes no difference to me whatsoever. Indeed, I always assumed they must have done.”

That made him stop, somewhat thrown by the statement. “Wait, what?”

Avon raised his eyebrows, apparently surprised by his surprise. “It seemed only logical. I did not think they would have any moral compunctions, after all, against breaking you in any way possible. And knowing you as I do, Blake, I imagine violation, humiliation and, if at all possible, unwanted physical pleasure would be a far more effective way of doing so than simple pain–”

“ _Pleasure_?” Blake latched onto that last part of the sentence, ignoring all the other uncomfortable facts Avon reminded him of. There was that anger he was looking for. “What, do you think I enjoyed–?”

“I think, if such a thing happened, it would be an entirely physiological reaction, the same as any man might experience under the same stimulus, and hence something no reasonable person could possibly blame you for.” Avon paused. “And knowing you as I do, I'm certain it would be something you would blame yourself for, badly.”

Well, Avon had him dead to rights there. Blake swallowed the bile in his throat, hardly noticing Avon's barely-veiled insult. “You wouldn't understand,” he said.

“No, I'm quite thankful to say I wouldn't.” Avon leaned against the control panel with a sigh. “I won't say my interrogation by the authorities was at all pleasant, but _I_ was spared that particular horror.”

There seemed to be something underlying Avon's words there, but somehow instinctively Blake knew he shouldn't pry. He sighed. _At least Avon knows what they did to him._ He knew that was a stupid thing to be jealous of, but he couldn't help himself.

Perhaps that was the most disturbing aspect of the whole thing: not that they had raped him (although that was plenty disturbing), but that with all they had done to him, his rape didn't even register.

After all, wasn't Avon right? This changed nothing. The Federation had violated him in ways he couldn't even fathom. They had taken his cause, his friends, his family, his life, his very identity from him. They'd made him into their puppet, playing model citizen for an invisible audience. He'd known they'd raped him long before he saw a bunch of troopers shove their cocks in his arse.

It would be easier if the tape stirred familiar memories, if it still woke him screaming from nightmares, the way being forced to recount the names of his friends and allies did. Without that, it was so easy to imagine...

“What do you want, Avon?” he asked, because interrogating Avon's motives was a much easier proposition than interrogating his own.

“Sleep, primarily,” Avon answered, not missing a beat. “It seems even less likely to happen than usual tonight, thanks to Jenna. My rooms are quite close to hers, did you know that? I can hear her pacing across her room, swearing and throwing things at the walls. It would be reassuring to know I'm not alone in my insomnia, but it does not help abate it, and I doubt she'd be receptive to any attempt to commiserate.”

Blake closed his eyes. Jenna. He knew she cared about him, and he had been a fool to play that video on the flight deck without thinking about how it would affect anyone else. He hoped desperately that her insomnia was triggered by how angry she was that such a thing had happened to him, and not because he had stirred something from her own past – both because the thought of such a thing happening to her made his blood boil, and because if it was it would be _his_ fault, because he didn't think before playing the tape, because he didn't realise anyone else in the world might be affected by it.

Yes, he knew Jenna was a tough woman, she could look after herself in almost any circumstance, but he also knew she was tough because she had to be. He didn't doubt there were men on the outer edges of the galaxy who might not like that their smuggler contact was a woman. And hadn't he proved that no-one was always that tough?

“Blake, there is no need for this to change anything at all,” Avon continued. “In the morning, Jenna will still adore you. The others will still accept your will without question. And I, of course, will doubt everything you say.” Blake opened his eyes to see Avon quirk a strange smile, which didn't quite meet his own. “You are still the same man as you were before you learned what happened to you. You do not even remember it. So why would you let three random troopers change anything at all about you? You're better than that, Blake.”

Blake's vision went fuzzy, staring into the stars ahead again. That was true, from a certain perspective – the men who'd done that to him didn't matter, did they? He was sure the order must have come from the top. The people they'd seen on film were just soldiers, nothing more; they probably had families and loved ones who had no idea they were capable of such cruelty. Maybe they'd only gone through with it because they knew they'd be killed if they didn't – in a sense, they'd been raped as much as he was. Chances were they didn't even enjoy what they did to him; either because of moral compunctions, or because they just didn't find him attractive.

Strongly Blake suspected that Avon, despite what he what he had said earlier, was trying to comfort him, in his own particularly Avon way. And it might have worked too, if only Avon had access to all the data – as is he was working from the brief snippet everyone had seen on the flight deck, which was all Blake had let anyone other than himself see.

He'd returned to his quarters after that, to pour through the rest of the tapes on his own – he needed to know. And he knew alright. The first few sessions, where he was clearly angry, captive, and fighting back, those weren't so bad. But afterward...

Blake knew the man they'd held by the end of it, the one who moaned, who begged, who said _yes please I'll do anything you want, I'll say anything you want, just fuck me more,_ wasn't him. He'd been both drugged and brainwashed, no-one could possibly think his deranged ramblings were his actual opinions, or that his enforced compliance was actual consent.

He knew that. He _knew_ that. So why couldn't he make himself believe it?

“I know,” he said, softly, and after a moment's thought sighed. Avon had sacrificed a lot giving up even this modicum of sympathy; it wouldn't do to have him think it hadn't worked. “But thank you, for reminding me. Go back to bed, Avon. I'll be alright. I just need some time to myself, that's all.”

Clearly relieved, Avon scowled at him. “I didn't come here for you,” he said, and assured Blake was stable enough for him to behave as usual, stalked off in a huff.

Blake sighed. At least that was one less thing to worry about. And he _would_ be alright – despite how much he was aching inside, deep down, nothing had changed.


End file.
